What I don't like about MSI's recent boards is that they seem to like blowing up when overclocking your CPU or using one of the upper range ones! 🙁
Seems MSI boards are, for the moment, more suitable for the lower end parts only. Too bad I put a Phenom II in mine. Unlocked and the board supposedly won't even take an overclock 😜
Personally I'd tend to avoid MSI for now (even though I like their price a lot, but I prefer to have a basic board of higher quality then a crappy board which appears to look good because it has all the features that the 3x as expensive ASUS/GA boards have).

Abit...I see most people tend to like them, but Abit did have lots of problems with leaking caps. Also, the only Abit board I ever tried was a complete failure, but apparently the Abit KV7-V was just a terrible board.
It would lock up often before even trying to load an OS. It locked up while counting thge memory. It even locked up a couple times when I was inside the BIOS trying different settings to make it work!
And my god, flashing the bugger was a real thriller! It got through the flash without crashing!!!...and it didn't fix any of it's problems -_-
Even installing an OS was impossible, I'd get an error causing setup to not continue. Even ME didn't want to install on that bugger.

BUT...I always kept the board (I fiddles with it back when my knowledge of hardware wasn't as good as it is now and figured I might find a way to make it work later) and now that I'm writing this, I should at least have tried a different CPU. Maybe that's what's causing all those problems. I did try swapping memory and all other things. Even tried with a Virge PCI card.

The funny thing is, as it was the fastest board I owned back in the day, I decided to just put a random HDD with 98SE in it (it made it to the desktop) and did an upgrade to 2000. This install did work and I could game on it and all without too many apparent problems (at least not obviously hardware related ones).

Anyway, it appears Asrock boards have gone up in quality. I didn't like their Socket A boards though(leaking caps, for one).
Asrock seems to have turned into the "weird" motherboard manufacturer with many interesting frankenboards 😜

awergh wrote:

That's weird. I tried Server 2003 on a P3-800 once and thought it was snappier then XP.

Nah its not a straight 2003 install it was the problem of slow bootup not snappiness I did find that 2003 seemed faster then 2000 Server for some reason though. I was running Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, DFS which slowed things down abit, some people might think I'm strange for running a domain when I'm the only user but thats just what I do.

Mine was a fresh 2003 install turned into a desktop OS. It booted quickly also. But I would recommend you tweak your 2003 before actually using it.
Perhaps it was some of those tweaks that helped in accelerating it's boottime?

Mine was a fresh 2003 install turned into a desktop OS. It booted quickly also. But I would recommend you tweak your 2003 before actually using it.
Perhaps it was some of those tweaks that helped in accelerating it's boottime?

Domain services is what generally makes 2003 take a much longer time to bootup then a plain install.
I still haven't done anything with that particularly PII mainly cause its a compaq board which makes me ignore it.

I've had no problem with either MSI boards or nforce boards in general so far. My AthlonXP system is still going strong with a MSI K7N2 delta-ILRS powering an athlon XP-M @2.2ghz. It's been my most stable longest lasting main system until retirement to second/backup system a few months ago. Never had issues with the nforce networking, and yes the ac97 codec is crappy, but who uses that anyways these days? I've had this baby hooked up to an external dolby digital decoder + DAC since 2001. The soundstorm does a great job at realtime 3d positional audio. Compared to the meagre VIA chipset performance I had to endure the years before, and the stability/compatability nightmares it was a real godsend.

Gigabyte boards have so far treated me nicely as well. My GA-5AX still hums allong nicely with a nice OC'ed k6-3+ and all its ram banks and PCI/ISA slots loaded with retro goodness. Even the dreaded agp problems that the ALI aladdin V supposedly suffers under seems to be non existent with a geforce 2 ULtra (Leadtek). The only downside to this chipset seems to be the fact that any recent linux distribution fails to install due to broken IDE support.

TYAN: I LOVE their older boards. They always seem to be laid out really nice. I cant ever say, "I wish the power connector was over here, not in the way" like I can on other cheap boards. Their new boards are just as nice. I have a dual socket F motherboard in the uATX form factor! I have it in one of those cute lian-li black cube cases and its my sisters "work" computer.

Supermicro: Probably the highest quality boards I've ever had the opportunity to use. I know they are EXPENSIVE AS HELL, but they compromise for nothing in terms of quality and workmanship. I can send them an email asking any random question and I always get an answer in minutes. (as long as its about their products naturally). Hell, I paid $600 for the motherboard in my current gaming computer and I use an older dual xeon for my personal home server and it still has a resale value of about $150!!! (long live P4 Netburst Xeons!!!) take a look at http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/motherboard/O … x0/H8DA6_-F.cfm and tell me that's not one sexy board.

The only board I've had fail on me so far (after using it for a while) was my old EPoX 8K7A. It did last me about 2 years though, until I replaced it with an ASUS A7N8X-VM/400. Since then I've primarily been in the ASUS camp.

Other boards I am using and used in the past:

Unknown 486 motherboard (SiS chipset) - I can't remember the make and model of this one, but I used this with my first PC, a 486DX/66. It had an SiS chipset and multiple VLB as well as ISA slots. I recall using a VLB hard disk controller card and hard drive data corruption was very commonplace (and frustrating). This one didn't last too long afterward as I shortly upgraded to a Pentium.

Gemlight GMB-P54SPS (Socket 5, SiS 501? chipset) - I don't know very much about this manufacturer (or if they're even still around), but I used this board for my first Pentium system. Very stable and worked with the rest of my hardware for playing Windows and DOS games. No more of that hard drive corruption BS that I experienced with my 486 system. When I upgraded to a Socket 7 system sometime in early 1997, I donated this to my old workplace, and it went through some good usage afterwards. Sent it to e-waste last year.

Intel TC430HX (Socket 7, i430HX chipset) - Great board, came with an integrated S3 ViRGE/DX graphics controller with 2 MB RAM. Was used for several years until I junked it.

Intel AN430TX (Socket 7, i430TX chipset) - Another great, stable Intel board. Came with an integrated ATI 3D Rage II graphics controller with 2 MB SGRAM. Used for several years as well until I junked it.

Intel SE440BX-2 (Slot 1, i440BX chipset) - Very nice, stable i440BX-based board, but also very boring (no overclocking options, as is usual with Intel's boards). Used with a PIII-600E Coppermine for a few years, and it is still sitting in my closet.

ABIT VH6 (Socket 370, VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset) - My first board from ABIT - used with a Celeron 700. It was OK, though not quite as stable and high performance as i440BX-based boards. It did have a bunch of features that my i440BX board lacked though, such as PC133 SDRAM and AGP 4x support. When I last used it though, it was starting to have some stability issues (i.e. system randomly resets for no reason, even though there were no problems with my CPU. might have been my RAM though, but I'll never know). This one is sitting in my closet for now.

EPoX 8K7A (Socket A, AMD 761 chipset) - Used with an Athlon XP 2000+. Was a nice, stable board for about 2 years, then crap started happening. First my system began to randomly reset for no reason (again, despite the fact that there were no problems with my CPU or RAM), and then the AGP slot crapped out (i.e. my AGP graphics cards would no longer boot correctly with it, then the problem got worse and I couldn't POST with an AGP graphics card). Eventually I got frustrated and replaced it with an ASUS board. I probably won't buy an EPoX board again, but I hear that their later boards are much better quality.

ASUS A7N8X-VM/400 (Socket A, nForce2 IGP chipset) - I replaced my EPoX board with this. Much better quality IMO and very feature-rich (audio, LAN built in, as well as a very nice integrated GeForce4 MX-based IGP). This started my addiction of purchasing uATX motherboards. Was used for many years until I retired it a couple years ago. Now it's just sitting in my drawer.

ASUS P4P800-VM (Socket 478, i865G chipset) - Awesome P4 board, I used this to build my "Hackintosh" system (paired with a P4 3.0 GHz Prescott), and much to my chagrin everything in OSX86 worked out of the box (the integrated audio, LAN, USB, and everything else). The onboard IGP is pretty crappy though (I had to use it for about a week after I had to send in my Radeon 9800 Pro card for exchange due to a broken fan), but there's always the AGP slot to put in a more powerful graphics card. Still using it to this day.

ASUS A8N-VM CSM (Socket 939, nForce 430/GeForce 6150 chipset) - Best uATX Socket 939 board ever. Currently using this with an Athlon 64 3200+ and GeForce 9500GT graphics card. The onboard IGP (GeForce 6150) even comes with a DVI-I port (older revisions, however, used DVI-D ports) right on the board, which was pretty uncommon back in this era. Very feature-rich and Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit works nicely on it without any hiccups. Still using it for my primary system; 5 years and still kicking. By far the best mobo I've ever owned.

MSI P6NGM-L (LGA775, nForce 610i/GeForce 7050 chipset) - Currently using in my sibling's machine, paired with a Core 2 Duo E7200 (Wolfdale) CPU and GeForce 8600GT graphics card. The first non-ASUS board that I had purchased in a while. Very stable and feature-rich for a uATX board. Installing Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit was kind of a hassle though, as the earliest retail version of the OS DVD had an old nForce driver that wouldn't work with this board (I would receive a BSOD during installation/hardware detection), and I ended up having to manually copy updated driver files from a thumb drive during the installation process in order to correct that problem - very frustrating if you can't type fast enough). Other than that little hiccup, I would say that MSI would be my other choice for boards. Also my other gripe is that there is no ability on this board to set a boot password (like I set with all my other machines). The board is also very nice-looking and colorful too.

ASUS P2B-VE (Slot 1, i440ZX chipset) - Based on the i440ZX (a cost-reduced 440BX) chipset, comes with an onboard ATI Rage Pro Turbo graphics controller with 8 MB SDRAM, as well as an AGP slot. This board was custom-designed for HP's Pavilion line of computers and thus the only documentation I could find was on HP's site. It has a 256 MB RAM limit, but since I'm using this for a retro rig running Win95C/WfWG 3.11 anyway it shouldn't be too much of a problem. Very high quality typical of ASUS boards.

Stuff I got for free:

Gigabyte GA-K8U-939 (Socket 939, ULi M1689 chipset) - Tried to use this to build my initial Hackintosh system, but it was for the most part incompatible. Instead, I installed Windows XP x64 and it seems to have no problems with it, along with my Radeon 9550 graphics card. Very nice Socket 939 board and a cheap alternative to nForce boards (this board utilizes the ULi M1689 chipset). Very nice-looking and colorful board too.

VIA P4XB-S (Socket 478, VIA P4X266 chipset) - Yes, when VIA couldn't get anyone to put their P4X266 chipset on motherboards (due to a legal squabble with Intel at the time), they resorted to making THEIR OWN motherboards. Currently using it with a P4 1.8 GHz (Willamette) and GeForce2 MX AGP in one of my retro rigs. The board's performance and stability easily rivals that of its main competitor, the Intel i845D chipset, and performance can be higher than Intel's chipset in some benchmarks. Also there is a BabyAT version of this board floating around somewhere (http://www.ad-promotion-gift.com/promotional- … oard_36164.html) but I'm guessing it's VERY HARD to find, seeing as it may be one of the couple (if not only) BabyAT P4 boards ever manufactured. Like Intel's own manufactured boards though, it's for the most part plain and doesn't offer many overclocking options. This chipset did not garner very widespread support though, oh well.

Biostar K8M800-M7A (Socket 754, VIA K8M800 chipset) - Currently use this with my parents' machine, paired with a Mobile Sempron 2800+. Unfortunately, I later found out that my Sempron wasn't one of the 64-bit ones, so I couldn't install XP x64 on it. Oh well, it's a nice, feature-rich and stable board nonetheless. Some issues with certain graphics cards, but nothing too problematic. It seems to work pretty well with my Sapphire Radeon X1600 Pro AGP card, though. Been using it for 2 years so far and not a single major problem yet, though I constantly hear of issues with Biostar products.
P.S. The board is very colorful too (even more so than my MSI and Gigabyte boards above). I'd have to say this one has the best physical aesthetics out of all the boards I own.

Pippy P. Poopypants wrote:

ASUS A8N-VM CSM (Socket 939, nForce 430/GeForce 6150 chipset) - Best uATX Socket 939 board ever. Currently using this with an Athlon 64 3200+ and GeForce 9500GT graphics card. The onboard IGP (GeForce 6150) even comes with a DVI-I port (older revisions, however, used DVI-D ports) right on the board, which was pretty uncommon back in this era. Very feature-rich and Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit works nicely on it without any hiccups. Still using it for my primary system; 5 years and still kicking. By far the best mobo I've ever owned.

I believe my headless Linux workstation is using an ASUS A8N SLI Premium with an Athlon x64 X2 4200 or somesuch. It started out as my main gaming desktop around 5 years ago, with 2 EVGA Geforce 7800GTX PCIe cards in SLI. I have to give it props for still running, but I do have a couple regrets about it:

• Socket 939 was almost EOL by the time I built the system around 5 years ago. As a result, the CPU became quickly obsolete and new games became CPU bound after only a year or so. There weren't a lot of faster Socket 939 CPUs released, so it wasn't even worth upgrading just the CPU. I should have either bought the system earlier or else bought something more bleeding-edge instead.
• The secondary SATA controller refused to work properly when I had an ASUS Xonar DX PCIe sound card installed. ASUS claimed to be unable to replicate this conflict between their own motherboard and sound card products, but it was pretty obvious to me! If I had instead used, say, a Gigabyte motherboard (my favorite brand at the time, before they were well-known) I might not have had that conflict.

It's still chugging along happily in the guest bedroom as a headless Linux box though (I use x2go and ssh to interact with it remotely). I finally had to replace the PSU a year or two ago because the old one slowly gave out (got random reboots more and more frequently until eventually it stopped powering up altogether). I should probably pull the video cards out to reduce power consumption, but I have no other use for them at the moment (they're too old to support PhysX/CUDA/etc., and my current desktop's AMD/ATI HD5870 GPU can drive at least 3 displays on its own).

Pippy P. Poopypants wrote:

-snip-

Nice post!

Btw, have you checked your Abit and EPoX boards for leaking caps? Especially the EPoX board may have had this problem (though it still wouldn't necessarily explain your problems with the AGP cards).
And about the i440ZX boards 256MB limit, have you ever tried putting more ram into it?
I know the i440LX (basically the i440BX topped at 66Mhz) officially supports 128MB/memory slot but I know from experience that LX seems to have the exact same limits as BX (LX works fine with DS memory modules of 256MB each 😉 ).

I am kinda saddened though that you tossed the AT boards 😜 (especially the SiS one would've been great for benchmarking and undocumented jumper settings).

I think Gemlight went out of business a long time ago

The VIA made s423 boards are interesting as they used the only s423 chipset that supported DDR, so it would be much more versatile then the RDRAM boards, which in turn both are faster then SDRAM.

I also like the red color MSI used for their boards, though when I unpacked my 770-C45, to my surprise it turned out to have a black PCB.
Some boards have an even more awesome PCB color, couple are white and theres even one s370 board made by AOpen that's pink!!!...but good luck finding one (that works, and anyway it doesn't even support Tualatin without use of an adapter).

At any rate, the MSI boards I've used all ran without much problems. Same goes for ASUS and Gigabyte and the 1 Chaintech board I apparently used for an actual retrorig.
All in all I've probably build 4 or 5 systems using MSI boards and 3 of them are still in use today.

HunterZ wrote:

I believe my headless Linux workstation is using an ASUS A8N SLI Premium with an Athlon x64 X2 4200 or somesuch. It started out […]
Show full quote

Pippy P. Poopypants wrote:

ASUS A8N-VM CSM (Socket 939, nForce 430/GeForce 6150 chipset) - Best uATX Socket 939 board ever. Currently using this with an Athlon 64 3200+ and GeForce 9500GT graphics card. The onboard IGP (GeForce 6150) even comes with a DVI-I port (older revisions, however, used DVI-D ports) right on the board, which was pretty uncommon back in this era. Very feature-rich and Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit works nicely on it without any hiccups. Still using it for my primary system; 5 years and still kicking. By far the best mobo I've ever owned.

I believe my headless Linux workstation is using an ASUS A8N SLI Premium with an Athlon x64 X2 4200 or somesuch. It started out as my main gaming desktop around 5 years ago, with 2 EVGA Geforce 7800GTX PCIe cards in SLI. I have to give it props for still running, but I do have a couple regrets about it:

• Socket 939 was almost EOL by the time I built the system around 5 years ago. As a result, the CPU became quickly obsolete and new games became CPU bound after only a year or so. There weren't a lot of faster Socket 939 CPUs released, so it wasn't even worth upgrading just the CPU. I should have either bought the system earlier or else bought something more bleeding-edge instead.
• The secondary SATA controller refused to work properly when I had an ASUS Xonar DX PCIe sound card installed. ASUS claimed to be unable to replicate this conflict between their own motherboard and sound card products, but it was pretty obvious to me! If I had instead used, say, a Gigabyte motherboard (my favorite brand at the time, before they were well-known) I might not have had that conflict.

It's still chugging along happily in the guest bedroom as a headless Linux box though (I use x2go and ssh to interact with it remotely). I finally had to replace the PSU a year or two ago because the old one slowly gave out (got random reboots more and more frequently until eventually it stopped powering up altogether). I should probably pull the video cards out to reduce power consumption, but I have no other use for them at the moment (they're too old to support PhysX/CUDA/etc., and my current desktop's AMD/ATI HD5870 GPU can drive at least 3 displays on its own).

Socket 939 topped out with the 2.4GHz Athlon 64 X2 4800+, I believe, but yeah it doesn't seem that much faster compared to what you're using there. Not too sure about the SATA controller on ASUS's A8N line of mobos, as I've always used an IDE hard drive with my system, but I am thinking of moving it to a SATA drive soon. I still hold on to Socket 939 for my own purposes (not for playing the latest games with insane detail, of course), but it does seem to hold up fairly well in games released in the past year or so with a powerful-enough graphics card (and as long as you turn down the details a couple notches with single-core CPUs). That's unfortunately one of the consequences of integrating the memory controller within the CPU itself. After working with AMD's mess here I just said "screw it" and went Intel instead for building any newer rigs (LGA775 lasted quite a while and was a formidable platform).

Tetrium wrote:

Nice post! […]
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Nice post!

Btw, have you checked your Abit and EPoX boards for leaking caps? Especially the EPoX board may have had this problem (though it still wouldn't necessarily explain your problems with the AGP cards).
And about the i440ZX boards 256MB limit, have you ever tried putting more ram into it?
I know the i440LX (basically the i440BX topped at 66Mhz) officially supports 128MB/memory slot but I know from experience that LX seems to have the exact same limits as BX (LX works fine with DS memory modules of 256MB each 😉 ).

I am kinda saddened though that you tossed the AT boards 😜 (especially the SiS one would've been great for benchmarking and undocumented jumper settings).

I think Gemlight went out of business a long time ago

The VIA made s423 boards are interesting as they used the only s423 chipset that supported DDR, so it would be much more versatile then the RDRAM boards, which in turn both are faster then SDRAM.

I also like the red color MSI used for their boards, though when I unpacked my 770-C45, to my surprise it turned out to have a black PCB.
Some boards have an even more awesome PCB color, couple are white and theres even one s370 board made by AOpen that's pink!!!...but good luck finding one (that works, and anyway it doesn't even support Tualatin without use of an adapter).

At any rate, the MSI boards I've used all ran without much problems. Same goes for ASUS and Gigabyte and the 1 Chaintech board I apparently used for an actual retrorig.
All in all I've probably build 4 or 5 systems using MSI boards and 3 of them are still in use today.

I junked my EPoX board quite a while ago, but last time I checked, yeah the caps on my ABIT board seriously looked like they were about to burst. I could always try to go to my electronics lab and find some suitable electrolytic caps to replace them with, but I'm too lazy and don't enjoy desoldering through-hole components due to lack of convenient tools available.

And regarding my 440ZX board, I initially had a 512MB stick and the board refused to POST with it. So I used a 256MB stick instead and lo and behold, it worked. Most (recent) 440BX boards, from what I've noticed, top out at 768MB. Which is kind of funny, considering that Intel's designated replacement for it (the i815 series) has a 512MB limit.

Yeah, one thing I regret doing is tossing out those old boards, because they were for the most part in working condition when I got rid of them. Back then, though, I thought to myself that since these things were obsolete anyway I wouldn't want to come back to them in the near future and deal with old crap. What a load of crock that turned out to be, huh.

Yep and considering the price of RDRAM at the time (roughly $800 for a 256 MB stick), DDR was certainly a cheaper alternative that had just as good performance. And with P4s at the time, RDRAM was pretty much the only option for uncompromising performance, with the SDRAM alternative crippling system performance. Once DDR400/PC3200 went gold, though, RDRAM was pretty much obsolete for PCs.

Haha and personally the PCB color doesn't really matter too much to me; it's just nice to look at it while assembling your PC. As long as it works for its intended purpose it's fine for me. And since none of my cases have a window I don't get to stare at it all the time either, so it doesn't matter. And I always stick to brand names when purchasing components (unless if it's for a non-high-priority component, such as an NIC). No-name stuff just has the stigma of quick failure (after all, it must be cheaper for a reason).

I just bought a ASRock P67 Extreme4 for for my new intel Sandy Bridge 2500K, nothing like core upgrade time! 😁 Unfortunately the board hasn't came in yet. Tracking says Monday... Anyways, a year or two ago I would have never thought about buying ASRock. But seems their P67 SLI board is getting good reviews and the price is right.

I really had a hard time choosing a mobo for my new intel chip. The Asus boards seem to be having many teething problems, and I personally think Asus is overrated, overpriced too.

I've had luck with Gigabyte, but their P67 board with SLI (along with Crossfire) was way too much for what I was wanting to give.

My last Biostar board died so I passed on that brand.

The ESC Sandy Bridge capable board reviewed fair, and I still have (or rather lent) a ESC K7S5A that has been running for years with a AMD Thunderbird in it.

PC Chips? Never

I bought a Jetway 440BX board once, lasted a whole month. Pass.

Abit? Yeah they used to make good stuff. They stopped making mobos right? 🙁

I've actually have had luck with Chaintech, but I didnt see any Sandy Bridge boards.

MSI, cannot comment.

What ever happened to Microstar?

I've had luck with Soyo, my last board was a Dragon.

Biggest issue I have with ASRock is the name. Shake that booty? I mean for real? 🤣 And I have always thought that putting EXTREME in your product branding is just stupid. Hell even intel did that crap. Made them look like idiots.

I myself had a good experience with ASRock. ASRock itself is ASUS's second-brand product, so its quality should not be very far from its brother 😀

Anyway, I have ever had an ASRock s478 and it is a good overclocking board 😀
My current PC is an ASRock s775 with Intel E5700, and it overclocks quite good 😁

MatthewBrian wrote:

My current PC is an ASRock s775 with Intel E5700, and it overclocks quite good 😁

Before my upgrade I had a Abit s775 and an intel E5200, ran for over a year at 4.0ghz 😁 Incredible CPU for under $50.

bushwack wrote:

What ever happened to Microstar?

Microstar International you mean?

Tetrium wrote:

bushwack wrote:

What ever happened to Microstar?

Microstar International you mean?

Hmmm never noticed that, but it used to be one word didn't it? Funny thing is I have a retail MSI GTX 260 but never noticed it said "Micro-Star" in small lettering under the MSI logo. I was thinking MicroStar died years ago. Doh! 😲

bushwack wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

bushwack wrote:

What ever happened to Microstar?

Microstar International you mean?

Hmmm never noticed that, but it used to be one word didn't it? Funny thing is I have a retail MSI GTX 260 but never noticed it said "Micro-Star" in small lettering under the MSI logo. I was thinking MicroStar died years ago. Doh! 😲

Never too old to learn! 😁

Had to revive this, but I finally had a chance to take my old ABIT VH6 board out of the drawer the other day and attempt to test it. Unfortunately, my suspicions were confirmed - the board no longer POSTs. And on top of that almost all of the electrolytic caps on it look like they're gonna burst. After reading up about the "capacitor plague" in the late 1990s/early 2000s, I think I now know the reason.

favorite: dfi, aopen (unfortunately both have ceased producting boards)
dislike: ecs, msi, epox, and many less known cheap brands.

I have been an asus fanboy for some time, just like them, they are blingy and quality.

I used to hate gigabyte after the first mobo i bought from them for my athlon xp 1600 started to crash all the time after a year. I spent hours and hours trying to troubleshoot the computer, to finally discover half the caps on the mobo were leaking. I called my retailer and he told me those gigabyte were crap and gigabyte was not honouring warranty for capacitor issues and he was not selling them anymore. Then i just hated gigabyte and avoided it like plague .

Since then i learned that pretty much all manufacturers were affected by capacitor plague at some point and that gigabyte also made many good product, including that 20 years old 486 mobo i have, that still works perfect.

The only motherboards I ever hated were proprietary OEM ones. You couldn't transplant them to new cases or reuse the OEM cases with new motherboards because the OEM boards would have everything in the wrong place or in the wrong orientation and many times the power supplies couldn't be reused and you couldn't upgrade to higher wattage ATX PSU's because they used unique voltages on the rails. Many of them had onboard AGP graphics but no AGP slot for upgrading and also usually had only one or two RAM slots so you never had enough for the next version of Windows when it came out requiring twice as much RAM as your motherboard could handle. Interiors of cases would also be deliberately cramped or would have obstructions so you couldn't get a hand in there without scraping up your knuckles or leaving a deep gash on the back of your hand. Overclocking features? Forget it. Even if there was a retail version of the motherboard with awesome O/C features you sure as heck weren't going to get them in an OEM system even though it would have cost them nothing to ship with the retail BIOS intact. The OEM version of the BIOS would be crippled to the point where you'd be lucky if you could reset the time on the system clock when the battery died and you had to replace it. PII-PIII era OEM boards were mostly bad news.